Master Li - Bridge Of Birds Part 8

"Long Live Lord Li of Kao!" the mobs howled. "Long live Lord Lu of Yu!"

I have probably given the impression that I had forgotten the importance of our quest. Such was not the case. Every night I dreamed of the children of Ku-fu, and I began to be tortured by guilt, and it was with immense relief that I heard Master Li say that our status was well enough established and it was time to make our move. He decided that the fastest way to get to the Key Rabbit would be to burn our palace to the ground, since it was rented from the Duke of Ch'in at a ruinous rate, and I was roasting a goose over the embers when the little fellow pattered up.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" he wailed. "Regulation 226, paragraph D, subsection B: palaces, rented, accidental destruction thereof -"

"Willful. I found the view boring," Master Li yawned.

"Subsection C: palaces, rented, willful destruction thereof. Full value plus fifty percent, plus firefighting costs, plus wreckage-removal costs, plus triple the normal fine for disturbing the peace, plus fifty percent of the total for defaming the view provided by the duke, plus -"

"Stop babbling, you idiot, and give me the grand total!" Master Li roared.

I thought that the little fellow was going to die. He rolled his pink-rimmed eyes toward Heaven and screamed: "Nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-two pieces of gold!"

Li Kao shrugged and pointed toward a long row of chests. "Take one of the blue ones," he said indifferently. "Actually the blue ones each contain twenty thousand pieces of gold, but Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu can scarcely be bothered with change."

The Key Rabbit toppled over backward. It took a few minutes to revive him, but he grasped the possibilities instantly.

"Alas!" he panted. "Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have no place in which to spend the night, and while my humble abode is scarcely suitable... You see, I will probably have to stay in the castle all night counting the duke's money, and my dear wife will be all alone and unprotected. Women require protection, among other things."

He fell to his knees and began kissing the tips of our sandals. "Such as pearls!" he wailed. "Jade!" he howled.

"May we offer you some roast goose?" Master Li said not unkindly. "It is Lord Lu of Yu's own recipe, marinated twenty-four hours in the lees of fine wine, with honey and crushed apricots. Lord Lu of Yu, incidentally, is a disciple of Chang Chou, who said that he preferred his own cooking, but other people's wives."

"Joy!" shrieked the Key Rabbit.

That night I prepared to meet the most expensive woman in the world. The moon was playing tag with fingers of clouds, and the breeze was warm and fragrant with flowers, and crickets chirped in the shadows of the Key Rabbit's garden. The path of pearls and jade that I had strewn upon the gra.s.s sparkled like a reflection of the Great River of Stars, and I found it difficult to breathe as I watched a young woman trot toward rne, exclaiming with wonder as she picked up each glittering bauble. Then she got close enough so I could see her clearly.

"Number Ten Ox," I said to myself, "you have been robbed!"

She wasn't even pretty. Lotus Cloud was pure peasant, with big feet, short thick legs, large square hands, and a plain flat face. She stopped short and examined me with her head c.o.c.ked at an angle, and she looked for all the world like a country girl who was trying to decide whether or not to buy a pet at a fair. I could almost hear her think, Yes, I'll take this cute thing home with me. And then she grinned.

I cannot describe that grin. It was as though all the hope and joy and love and laughter that there was in the whole world had gathered into a fist that reached out and belted me in the heart, and the next thing I knew I was on my knees with my arms wrapped around her legs and my head pressed against her thighs.

"My surname if Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Cla.s.sic of Tea, and everyone calls me Number Ten Ox," I moaned.

She laughed softly, and her fingers played with my hair.

"I shall call you Boopsie," she said.

The measure of my enchantment may be judged from the fact that I enjoyed being called Boopsie. In fact, I felt like wagging my tail whenever Lotus Cloud came into view.

"Key Rabbit," I said a couple of days later, "your beloved wife is not witty, and she is not wise, and she cannot read or write, and she has no social graces whatsoever, and she isn't even pretty, and I wors.h.i.+p the very ground that she walks on."

"That," sighed the Key Rabbit, "is what all her protectors say."

"Master Li, have I lost my mind?" I asked.

"Well, beauty is a ridiculously overrated commodity," he said. "Over the past eighty or ninety years I have known a great many beautiful women, and they've all been the same. A beauty is forced to lie late in her bed in the morning in order to gather strength for another mighty battle with nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range style, anoints herself with Nine Bends of the River Diving-Water Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, covers the whole works with two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach, squeezes into a plum-blossom-patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks into the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to fine none, checks to make sure that her makeup has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day, which, like any other day, consists of gossip and giggles."

"That's part of it!" I cried. "Lotus Cloud hops out of bed and plunges her head into a pail of cold water, bellows "Aaarrrggghh!" runs a comb through her hair, and looks around to see if there's anyone handy who feels like making love. If such is the case, she hops back into bed. If not, she jumps into whatever clothes are lying around and leaps out the door - or window, it doesn't matter - to see what wonders the new day will bring, and since she views the world with the delighted eyes of a child, the day is bound to be marvelous."

"That," sighed the Key Rabbit, "is what all her protectors say. How I wish that I could afford my dear wife for myself."

"n.o.body can afford your dear wife," Master Li snarled.

He had a point, although Lotus Cloud was not promiscuous in her greed. At an early age the dear girl had become a specialist. Diamonds did not interest her. Emeralds bored her to tears. I once gave her a casket filled with gold, and she promptly handed it to a friend.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"Because she wanted it, Boopsie," said Lotus Cloud, and it was clear that she thought I was an idiot to ask such a stupid question.

Ah, but fill that same casket with pearls and jade! Never before or since have I known anything to match Lotus Cloud's reaction to a gift of pearls and jade. Her eyes grew wide with wonder, and her hands reached out reverently. A soul-shaking desire wracked her whole body, and her face was transfigured by indescribable longing. The sheer force of her greed would practically knock you off your feet, and she would fling herself into your arms and vow to adore you throughout eternity.

A man will do practically anything to get a reaction like that, and that was the trouble. Within ten minutes Lotus Cloud would forget all about your wonderful gift, and if you wanted to produce another reaction, you had to produce another casket of pearls and jade.

"Like all cla.s.sic swindles it is simplicity itself," Master Li said with grudging respect.

"I greatly admire her technique, even as it drives me toward bankruptcy," I said.

"That," sighed the Key Rabbit, "is what all her protectors say."

Li Kao was making splendid progress with the Key Rabbit. It was only a matter of time before he would be able to persuade the duke's a.s.sessor to sneak us into the labyrinth and get us out again, but in the meantime I had to keep Lotus Cloud supplied with pearls and jade. Our chests of gold were melting like snow in August, and one terrible morning I stared in disbelief at the tiny handful of coins that was all that remained of the largest private fortune in China.

"Ox, don't look so guilty," Master Li said comfortingly. "The dear girl's pigeon-plucking technique is quite remarkable. Let's go pluck a few pigeons ourselves."

Not long afterward a splendid fellow named Liverlips Loo, who was attired as the majordomo of a great house, banged a gold-tipped staff against the door of the stingiest miser in town. Behind Liverlips Loo was a palatial palanquin, upon which rode two elegant aristocrats, a cart loaded with garbage, and a goat.

"Throw open the doors!" roared Liverlips Loo. "Ten thousand blessings have descended upon you, for Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have condescended to rest in your miserable hovel!"

I have decided that the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.

The door crashed open and we stared at a gentleman who owned six different houses in six different cities, and who was blessed with a pair of glittering little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coa.r.s.e gray hair.

"What have you done with my five hundred pieces of gold?" screamed Miser Shen.

Liverlips Loo escaped quite easily, but when Li Kao and I jumped from the palanquin we landed on top of the Key Rabbit and his platoon of soldiers. Somehow we became entangled in a chain that was around the Key Rabbit's neck, and he tugged frantically at his end. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" he wailed, and I a.s.sume that he thought that we were trying to steal the key to the duke's front door. The single key on the end of the chain was shaped like a flower, with sixteen tiny points that had to make contact with precisely the right amount of force before the lock would open, and a pressure lock costs several fortunes. The soldiers descended upon us. We were hauled off to court, but since Liverlips Loo had taken the cart and the goat with him, there was no evidence. Miser Shen could do little more than bellow accusations, but Miser Shen wasn't the problem. The problem was that we were no longer in a position to pay the mandatory fine for disturbing the peace, and the penalty for not paying a fine in the duke's city was death.

"Woe!" wailed the Key Rabbit. "Woe! Woe! Woe! To think that I should be partly responsible for the decapitation of my dearest friend and the most generous protector that my dear wife has ever had!"

Eventually he calmed down enough to find a bright side.

"Do not worry about Lotus Cloud," he told me comfortingly. "I have discovered that Miser Shen is the wealthiest man in town. I will invite him to tea, and unless my dear wife has suddenly lost her touch, she will be rolling in pearls and jade."

"Splendid," I said.

There was no room in my heart for any more misery. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw the children of Ku-fu lying as still as death, and the abbot praying, and the parents telling each other not to worry because Master Li and Number Ten Ox were sure to return with the wonderful root that could cure ku poisoning.

15. The Labyrinth

I was to see Lotus Cloud one more time before we faced the headman's axe. We were chained to a long line of condemned convicts and marched through the streets, and the mobs that had sung the praises of Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu gathered around us once more, to jeer and throw garbage. Lotus Cloud somehow made her way through the crowd. She slipped past the soldiers and ran up to me and tossed something that settled around my neck. I couldn't see what it was, and the jeers were so loud that I could only hear part of her message.

"Once when he was drunk, my miserable husband told me... Boopsie, I stole this because if the duke is playful..." Soldiers were dragging her away. "Follow the dragon!" Lotus Cloud yelled. "You must follow the dragon!"

Then she was gone, and I had no idea what she was talking about. The soldiers lashed the mob out of the way, and we were marched up the hill to the Castle of the Labyrinth.

I was so terrified that I have no memory at all of approaching the castle. Gradually I became aware of the fact that we were crossing the great drawbridge and pa.s.sing through immense steel gates, and we entered a courtyard that was vast enough to hold several thousand soldiers. The murderous iron bolts of countless crossbows pointed at us through slits in the ma.s.sive walls, and above us smoke and flames were lifting from vats of boiling oil. The clash of weapons and the roar of harsh voices and the tramp of marching feet was deafening, and when we entered a maze of long stone tunnels an infinity of echoes battered my ears. Ten times we reached checkpoints where guards demanded secret signs and pa.s.swords, and then iron gates crashed open and whips lashed us as we marched through. A dull gleam of light was ahead of us, and soldiers lined the walls, and I realized that we were approaching a door of solid gold.

It swung silently open. The soldiers prodded us across an acre of polished lapis lazuli toward a huge golden throne, and I trembled with fear as I approached the Duke of Ch'in. The hideous mask of a snarling tiger loomed larger and larger, and the duke was so big that the breadth of his shoulders matched the bulk of his mask. He wore gloves of gold mesh and a long cloak of feathers, and I saw with a shudder that the feathers at the bottom of the cloak were darkly stained. The chopping block and the basin that caught the heads and blood were almost directly at his feet, and apparently he enjoyed the view.

Soldiers lined all four walls, and two rows of dignitaries flanked the throne. The executioner was a huge Mongol who was stripped to the waist, and his glittering axe was almost as big as he was. A bonze administered the last rites, and it seemed to me that the ceremony was proceeding with unseemly haste. The chain that linked the convicts together was unlocked, although our hands remained manacled behind us, and the first condemned man was shoved forward. The sergeant at arms bellowed the charge against him and the death sentence, and soldiers neatly kicked the poor fellow's feet out from under him so that he fell with his neck stretched across the chopping block. The bonze muttered the shortest prayer that I had ever heard, and the sergeant at arms asked if the victim had any last words. The condemned man began a desperate plea for mercy, which the bonze cut short by nodding to the executioners.

The great axe lifted, and the vast room was hushed. There was a metallic blur and a dull thud, and blood spurted and a head landed in the stone basin with a sickly wet splash. The dignitaries applauded politely, and the Duke of Ch'in uttered a little whinny of pleasure.

To my amazement Li Kao fainted, or so I thought until I realized that he was using the opportunity to reach his left sandal. He slid half of the heel aside and came up with a couple of lockpicks, and then the swearing soldiers jerked him back to his feet. Li Kao managed to slip one of the tiny picks into my hands.

"Ox, we can't possibly escape from here," he whispered. "I'm afraid that we can do nothing for the children of your village, but one of the Dukes of Ch'in killed my parents, and if you have no objection, we will try to slit this b.a.s.t.a.r.d's throat."

I had no objection, but the lockpick was a bit too small and it was very difficult to work with it while my hands were manacled behind my back. Again and again the great axe flashed through the air, and the applause of the dignitaries was nearly continuous, and the line of condemned men was steadily moving toward the throne. The duke was laughing as the heads splashed into the basin, and the soldiers joked with the sergeant at arms as they carried the carca.s.ses away. Sometimes the legs were still twitching, and spurts of blood from the severed necks caused sticky red puddles to slide across the floor, joined by dark trickles from the overflowing basin. The feathers at the bottom of the duke's robe were dripping with scarlet. Then only one prisoner stood between me and the axe. He was a middle-aged man, slim and slightly stooped, and he had been viewing the ma.s.sacre with an air of ironic calm.

"Chin Shengt'an, who dared to protest the peasant taxes imposed by the Duke of Ch'in. The sentence is death!" roared the sergeant at arms.

That must have taken incredible courage. I was later to learn that Chin Shengt'an was one of the greatest writers and critics in the empire, and that his name meant "Sigh of the Sage," because when he was born a deep sigh was heard from the Temple of Confucius. His feet were kicked out from under him. His neck lay on the block, and the bonze mumbled a prayer, and the sergeant at arms asked if he had any last words. The ironic eyes lifted.

"Eat pickled turnips with yellow beans," he said politely. "It gives the taste of walnut."

I deeply regret that I never had the opportunity to know him. The axe flashed through the air, and the head of the man who had dared to protest an unfair tax joined the others in the basin. The soldiers shoved me forward.

"Lord Lu of Yu, who failed to pay his fine for disturbing the peace. The sentence is death!" roared the sergeant at arms.

My feet were kicked from under me and my neck landed neatly upon the block. The ironic eyes of Shengt'an looked up at me from the basin, and while the bonze mumbled the prayer I tried to think of an exit line that would be worthy of his.

"Any last words?" asked the sergeant at arms.

I was only Number Ten Ox, so I lifted my head to the Duke of Ch'in. "I hope I splatter blood all over you, you son of a sow!" I yelled. Oddly enough I felt much better, and I stopped gagging at the thick sweet smell of blood.

To my astonishment the duke lifted a hand and stopped the executioner. He beckoned, and soldiers lifted me and dragged me so close to the throne that my face was almost touching the tiger mask. Surely the great and powerful Duke of Ch'in could not be interested in Number Ten Ox! He wasn't. He was interested in whatever it was that Lotus Cloud has tossed around my neck, and the gold-meshed fingers of his right hand reached out and touched it. Then he leaned forward, and I felt the eyes behind the slits in the mask boring into mine, and with a sick sense of terror I realized that he was looking right through my eyes into my brain! The voice that came through the mouthpiece was a voice of metal.

"So, the wife of my a.s.sessor gave you this," the duke whispered. "He shall be punished for his careless words." I could feel his mind crawling over mine, probing and peering and searching. "You do not know what it means," he whispered. "You know nothing of importance. I see a foolish abbot, and I see children whose deaths will serve to decrease the surplus population, and I see a ghost who dances with swords, and I see your antiquated companion dancing and singing songs. I can find no awareness of meaningful things, and although you seek the right ginseng root, you do so for the wrong reason." The terrible tiger mask lifted. "Soldiers, continue with the execution," ordered the Duke of Ch'in.

My fingers had automatically continued to fumble with the pick, and suddenly I felt it turn in the lock.

"Master Li!" I yelled, as I jerked my hands apart and lashed out at the soldiers with the manacles. His hands were already free, and he used the chain of his manacles to trip the executioner, who toppled toward me. "Get him, Ox!" Master Li roared.

I grabbed the axe and whirled to the throne and struck with all my might, and to my astonishment that huge blade bounced off the flimsy cloak of feathers as though it had hit the strongest steel. My hands turned numb with the shock, and I swore and swung again. This time the duke was not so lucky. The blade plunged right through his chest to his heart, and I turned to die like a gentlemen at the hands of the soldiers. What I saw made me doubt my sanity.

The soldiers were laughing. The dignitaries were laughing. The bonze was laughing. The executioner got to his feet and began laughing. I turned dazedly to the throne, and there sat the Duke of Ch'in with the huge axe buried in his heart. He was laughing.

"Both the young fool and the old fool are fit for nothing more serious than bouncing b.a.l.l.s and playing games! Very well, we will play a game," he chortled. His fingers closed around an ornament on the arm of his throne. The soldiers next to us scrambled hastily away. "You seek the Great Root of Power? It can indeed be found, so find it."

The floor suddenly dropped out from under us.

Down, down, down, plunging head over heels into darkness - just when I felt that I might fall forever, I landed with a shock in icy water, and I popped up to the surface and spat out a mouthful of brine.

"Master Li!" I cried.

"Right behind you," he panted.

Li Kao grabbed my belt. A light was flickering in the distance. The pool in which we had landed was about fifty feet in circ.u.mference, and I swam across and climbed up upon a flat rock ledge. The light was coming from a single torch, and Li Kao lifted it from the brackets and swung it around.

We were in a large cavern carved from black stone. The air was moist and heavy, and it reeked of something unpleasant. Ahead of us was an archway, and when Master Li lifted the torch we saw that the first duke's famous maxim had been chiseled in the stone above the curve of the arch:

PUNISHMENT PRODUCES FORCE, FORCE PRODUCES STRENGTH,.

STRENGTH PRODUCES AWE, AWE PRODUCES VIRTUE;.

THUS VIRTUE HAS ITS ORIGIN IN PUNISHMENT.

We stepped through the archway and saw that an infinity of narrow tunnels branched out from the central path. We were walking upon human bones, and the reek came from decaying flesh, although I saw no recent bodies. I stared at shattered skulls, and at thigh bones that had been snapped like bamboo twigs.

"Master Li, the thing that did this had to be stronger than twenty dragons," I whispered.

"Oh, far stronger than that." He reached out and touched his finger to the wall, and when he held it to my nose I smelled seaweed. Then he lifted his torch high above his head, and when my eyes lifted with it I saw the corpses that were causing the horrible smell. They were crammed into crevices in the stone ceiling. Half of a face looked down at me, and a dangling leg dripped blood.

"The monster that stalks the labyrinth is simply the tide," Master Li said calmly, "and if the tide can get out of it, so can we. Ox, was that some sort of trick axe, like the fake swords used in carnivals?"

"No, sir," I said firmly. "That was a real axe, and it really entered the duke's heart."

He scratched his head thoughtfully. "Strange," he muttered. "If we get out of here alive, we most certainly must take another crack at killing him, purely in the interest of science."

"Master Li, the duke can read minds," I whispered, trembling all over. "He looked through my eyes, and I could feel his brain crawling over mine. It was wet and clammy, and it was like being nuzzled by cold, slimy lips."

"Your powers of description are commendable," he said, but I could tell that he didn't believe a word of it. "What was he so interested in?"

I had almost forgotten it, but now I lifted the thing that Lotus Cloud had tossed around my neck. It was a silver chain with a large piece of coral at the end of it. The coral was a beautiful deep-red, and a cleverly carved green jade dragon was winding through the holes. I wondered how the Key Rabbit had managed to acquire such a beautiful pendant, because it must be very expensive. I searched for some sort of a message that might be written on it, but there wasn't one.

Li Kao shrugged. "Well, at any rate we've arrived in the labyrinth, which is what we intended all along. Getting out may be a bit of a problem, however, and I suggest that we start immediately."